Today, at least in time zones east of the International Dateline, it's Beethoven's birthday.  What can we say about Ludwig van Beethoven?  The famous portrait of him below captures how many of us see him:  a brooding, brilliant composer.  When we think about Amadeus Wolfgang Mozart, we think of the Enlightenment and how it liberated the human mind and imagination from the constraints of a Church struggling with its response to impending modernity.  We see his music as poetry, lilting and dancing its way across our lives.

     Beethoven's music, however, strikes us with its passion.  It comes to us almost as a force of nature, barreling its way into our hearts, taking them apart, making us contemplate the deeper forces that drive human existence.  We swoon over Beethoven's melodies and the viscerality with which he endowed them, and we wonder about the power of the universe which his songs describe.  A Romantic in the purest sense, Beethoven reminds us of the presence and possibilities of transcendence.

     I thank God for Beethoven.  I thank him for giving him to us, for giving him to show us as we are, beings of mind and creatures of heart, living, personal, and dynamic entities made to grapple bravely and meaningfully with the weight of life, to take hold of everything that is before us.  I thank God for using Beethoven to open and unfold for us glimpses of what we, and life, can be.